The Best Near-Term Future of Space Exploration? 444
An anonymous reader writes "Much fanfare has been made about manned missions to moons and planets, but little has been done about travel to the asteroids — until now. NASA is working on plans for a trip to the asteroids by 2025. This type of mission has great potential for positive economic return based on the fact that no effort has to be spent on getting in and out of a distant planet's gravity well. Yes, we should go to the planets, but we should master mining the asteroid belt for resources first because it is easiest. What do you think?"
It's a challenging game (Score:4, Funny)
But someone has to play it.
Why mine the asteroids? (Score:4, Funny)
Just tie a rope to them from your spaceship and tow them back to earth.
Re:Why mine the asteroids? (Score:5, Funny)
You need a soundtrack for your mission, cowboy. (Score:2)
Have a listen [tindeck.com].
“Peep it, I’ll break it down so you can absorb it (okay)
You need to mind planets’ minerals and do it from orbit (yo)
Some good advice, and you’re too much of a noob to ignore it (ay)
You’ll get stranded with no fuel if you foolishly floor it
I used to rock microphones rhyming in a stadium (okay)
These days i launch probes mining for palladium (no doubt)”
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Because it's more exciting to launch a multi-billion dollar vehicle out billions of miles and engineer the safe return of some metallic dirt, than to drive over to similar dirt here on Earth and pick it up.
Re:Why mine the asteroids? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, let's look at some numbers. In general, if it's coming in from outside our gravity well, it'll be hitting atmosphere at escape speed or a bit over. Or a whole lot over. But let's go with escape speed.
Let's assume we're talking a billion ton asteroid, just for round numbers.
So, escape speed, billion tons...impact energy is on the order of 40 gigatons of TNT.
So, which desert area will we use for safety?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I suggest the Aitken basin. That, or your mom.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And what happens when the orbit gets miscalculated and the rock re-enters?
That could get ugly.
...which will wipe out New York.
Wait, what? Where's the downside?
I feel cheated!
You started off so well....
What do I think? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
without our lifetime...
... being spent harnessing that technology?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My thinking is that the best place to set up self sufficient colonies independent of Earth is to star
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"But I don't think it will be economically rewarding without our lifetime."
Of course not, given the silly desire to send humans early in the game.
There isn't a good reason not to send forty or fifty or whatever remote-manned missions first. Humans would be along for the ride merely for the adventure, which is nice but can wait. If we want to mine space, don't increase the cost by having miners onsite.
The dumbest idea in the movie Total Recall was that there would be any need for human miners on Mars in the
Re:What do I think? (Score:4, Interesting)
The dumbest idea in the movie Total Recall was that there would be any need for human miners on Mars in the first place.
Yeah, the giant alien-built pyramid which magically gave mars an atmosphere ... that was WAY more realistic!
The plausibility of the scenario you complain about hinges entirely on the cost of transport at the time that the colonies were established. Given that middle-class people in the Total Recall Universe can apparently afford vacation travel to Mars, I'd say the idea of human miners is completely realistic. With the availability of such cheap travel, and the abundance of poverty on Earth, it makes perfect sense to ship off your poor and your criminals to slave away in martian mines, instead of sending billion-dollar machines.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If your goal is to set up self-sufficient colonies independent of Earth, the asteroid belt is the best place to do it. But I don't think it will be economically rewarding without our lifetime.
Ummm... no.
We have yet to solve the medical problems imposed by microgravity. Until we do, the only viable sites for colonies in the near future are the Moon and Mars.
Re: (Score:2)
If we were able to park our craft on an asteroid with a stable and well known trajectory it seems to me that we could hitch a free ride to the outer planets. Granted we would need some serious boosters to attain sufficient escape velocity but if such an asteroid could be found it would solve some problems. We have some seriously bright minds at NASA/JPL so I don't believe I'm the first person to think of this. Europa anyone?
To land on an asteroid, using technology remotely related to what we have now, it's going to have to match the velocity of the asteroid. Doing that negates any energy savings gained by the technique. Alternatively we could do a normal gravitational boost off of an asteroid, but the eccentric ones probably don't weight enough to help much. Or we could make super durable probes that can handle a tens of km/s collision with the asteroid, in which case we can then get our cheap ride to wherever it goes.
Re: (Score:2)
Why mining? (Score:2)
What would the asteroid miners ship back?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Every metal that we currently mine in the earth's crust. They're all plentiful in asteroids, and rare on Earth. In fact, everything that we currently mine (copper, iron, zinc, platinum, gold, etc.) came from asteroid impacts. During the early formation of the planet, when it was still mostly liquid, all those elements moved to the core, leaving only things like calcium and silicon and carbon in the Earth's crust when it cooled. All the useful elements came from asteroid impacts after that.
The amount of
Re:Why mining? (Score:5, Funny)
The amount of wealth in metals in the asteroids is nearly unimaginable. A single small asteroid could be worth trillions of dollars.
oh sure, its in a nice neighborhood and all; but the commute's a real bitch.
Re: (Score:2)
Compared to how much was spent on the Apollo missions, that one asteroid would yield a huge profit.
Re:Why mining? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't matter. They were a whole series of missions, not just one mission, and they were done with technology far behind today's (especially computer technology). After what we've learned there, and with modern technology, we should be able to pull off a single asteroid mission for a similar cost. The big unknowns are 1) how to deal with sending people that far away, especially in regards to radiation, though keeping the trip short should alleviate that concern, and 2) how to actually extract minerals from the asteroid and bring them back to earth in quantities sufficient to make it viable. Should we capture the asteroid (assuming a fairly small asteroid here) and bring it to earth orbit, or mine it where it is (allowing us to work with much larger asteroids)?
Obviously, the first mission probably won't be profitable, but we just have to figure out how to scale it up.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:worth trillions? (Score:5, Funny)
If it was, it wouldn't be.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not really what I was getting at. If individual asteroids contain significant percentages of the total mined gold supply (a couple trillion), any successful asteroid mining is going to have a huge impact on the percieved value of all those metals (and just imagine a couple of capitalists in a friendly competition to bring back 50 times the amount of gold that is currently mined in a year, that would just barely show up over the decades it took to do it...).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why mining? (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, everything that we currently mine (copper, iron, zinc, platinum, gold, etc.) came from asteroid impacts.
Only in the sense that Earth is basically built of asteroids in the first place. But in that limit, you're just advocating mining on Earth again, the nearest and most habitable such body.
all those elements moved to the core, leaving only things like calcium and silicon and carbon in the Earth's crust when it cooled. All the useful elements came from asteroid impacts after that.
Good lord, no. Certainly elements did tend to head to the core preferentially. Such siderophilic (iron-loving) elements are fairly rare in the Earth's upper layers. Others are still fairly common. Or at least common enough. Even iron, which lead the charge to the core during differentiation, is awfully common in the crust.
In fact, silicon (the second most abundant element in the crust) is only about ten times more common than iron, which is about as abundant as calcium (which you cite as being abundant). Aluminum is more abundant than calcium and is in fact only a few times less abundant than silicon. (Oxygen, incidentally, is the most common element in the crust, beating silicon out by a factor of a few.) In fact, most metals we're particularly attached to are about one-in-ten-thousandth as common as silicon. If you factor in the fact that they're usually found in clumps, that's a very cheerful thought.
(For the record [wikimedia.org].)
By the way, if your theory of asteroid delivery were true, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have very much metals to work with. The Earth's crust is tectonically recycled every several hundred million years (any given chunk has been subducted and recycled several times, more or less; we estimated this my first year of grad school, but I forget the numbers exactly), so you could only rely on the metals delivered in the past few hundred million years. Asteroid impacts are getting rarer all the time, especially big ones.
Also, recall that a given asteroid is as likely as much rock as metal. In fact, Earth is more metal per mass than the average asteroid. (A lot of our silicates ended up in the Moon instead.) However, some asteroids are definitely mostly metallic and for mining purposes, that's a mad bonus. (For metals raining down from heaven, however, you have to factor in the fraction of the asteroids that isn't metal.)
Also, you're not factoring in the costs of bringing metals back to the Earth (if that's your goal). It's far more expensive to do that than to mine them here and will be for the foreseeable future. Of course, if your goal is to use them in space anyway, then it might be better to mine them there. (On the other hand, then you have to build the refining and construction infrastructure in space, which has a lot of challenges of its own.)
Re:Why mining? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why mining? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why mining? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why mining? (Score:4, Interesting)
Mining stuff here on Earth makes a mess of our environment (more so in some places than others; here in the Arizona desert, it pretty much just results in an ugly pit, but in West Virginia, mountaintop-removal mining causes all kinds of ecological problems).
Now people (like China) are already talking about mining the sea floor, because we've depleted everywhere else. The sea floor is a much harsher environment than space for humans; in space, you just need to design a vessel that can contain a measly 1 atmosphere of pressure. Sending people underwater is much harder since you have to design your craft to keep hundreds or thousands of atmospheres of pressure out. Of course, you can do a lot of work with ROVs, but there's still a lot of technical challenges there because of the depth, and the presence of (very high-pressure) water all around. Space is relatively easy to work in. The only problem is getting out of our gravity well.
Digging deeper into the crust isn't exactly safe, either. Ask the miners in Chile who are still trapped underground.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You don't need to go to the asteroid belt to find asteroids; there's a bunch of them near Earth's orbit. I don't know what NASA's plans are, but it seems like it'd be easier to target one of those.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Depends on what you call "home", I suppose... (Seriously: thanks to Time for Timer[1], I used to think that the bacteria in my teeth had briefcases, and had some "home" that they went to, when they weren't busy removing my plaque... Ah, childish notions...)
[1] -- "When my ten-gallon hat is feeling five-gallons flat, I hanker for a hunk of cheese!" I think that did far more than the "Got Milk?" campaign did, especially when they started suing any "Got X?"-alikes.
Re: (Score:2)
The only problem is getting out of our gravity well.
Not only are you forgetting about cosmic radiation, which is a severe hindrance, you're vastly oversimplifying the problem of the gravity well, since sustaining a human presence on an asteroid would require regular shipments of supplies at exorbitant cost. I'm also curious how you expect the raw materials to make it back down to Earth. Actually refining many of these metals in space would also be a pain in the ass, but landing asteroids wouldn't be very
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
alternatives for shallow gravity wells (Score:2)
if they want a shallow gravity well, the moons of mars would make a good target. http://xkcd.com/681_large/ [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Except that Phobos and Deimos are both well down in the gravity well of Mars. Asteroids orbiting the sun are much easier to get to, especially those with orbits which cross the orbit of Earth.
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, the moons of Mars are really nothing more than small asteroids that have been captured by Mars' gravity so that they orbit it. They're very small and irregularly shaped.
However, it seems to me the easiest target would be an asteroid that's in an Earth-crossing solar orbit, or so other nearby asteroid. You don't have to go all the way to the asteroid belt to find asteroids.
Re: (Score:2)
Came here for a reference to the XKCD about this posted today... I gotta do everything myself? http://xkcd.com/786/ [xkcd.com]
The concept that asteroids are easiest is ... (Score:2, Interesting)
The concept that space exploration to mine asteroids is easiest is, itself, questionable.
Each asteroid has a larger chance of inter-asteroid impacts.
Perhaps a better choice might be one of the moons of Mars, so that we can build a giant space ladder our robot overlords can climb up on the way to invading us?
Re: (Score:2)
Larger than what? You're still much more likely to die from the trip or radiation-induced cancer.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless you convert a NEO asteroid into a radiation shielded rocket that has an ion drive that consumes the asteroid itself.
Re:The concept that asteroids are easiest is ... (Score:5, Funny)
Belters! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Belters! (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no urgency to manned missions. We already mechanize as much mining on Earth as possible, to cut costs which include expensive miners (who get killed, maimed, and expensively buried for month).
If we want to mine space resources, don't bring people, make remote systems so good we won't need humans onsite.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, serious question here, because I'm baffled.
How do we return any actual meaningful mass from an asteroid? How do we push it home? What it the source of the push?
Do we send up rockets that are carrying rockets that then b
Re:Belters! (Score:4, Informative)
For one, how do you get a rocket with "significant mass" anywhere? We have enough difficulty getting modules the size of a family car into space, I dread to think how we would significantly increase that. And if you can move a rocket around which is as massive as the asteroids, surely you will have already solved the problem in some way?
For two, I'm inherently nervous about slinging asteroids at Earth with an intention for them to touch down, or enter a steady orbit. Makes you wonder exactly what the dinosaurs were up to in the weeks preceding their unfortunate incident...
Economic sense? (Score:2)
Anonymous reader (probably a PR flack for Science) said: "This type of mission has great potential for positive economic return based on the fact that no effort has to be spent on getting in and out of a distant planet's gravity well."
Let's see, from TFA: "Hopkins said that a basic six-month human mission to an asteroid could return about 100 kilograms of samples collected from different spots on the space rock." OK, so you fly directly to the solid gold asteroid and pick up 100 KG of that. That's 3527 ou
Re: (Score:2)
Nuke them (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
the physics of it don't pan out though. any asteroid large enough to be a significant threat is not something we could damage with current nuclear yields and making larger bombs, while possible, would be more dangerous to have here than the remote chance of an asteroid impact.
we'd be better off investigating other means of modifying an asteroids path such as solar sails, robotic mass drivers, parking a small mass near it for gravitational deflection to name a few.
NASA? (Score:2)
Mining, materials, machining, construction... (Score:2)
We need to automate these functions on Earth, as well as in space. Labor has to be replaced from the bottom up to preserve stability and peace. The mass of our spaceships has to originate in space.
Welcome to Earth (Score:2, Insightful)
A few days ago, copponex wrote [slashdot.org]:
"America is basically like a 7-11 that's about to go under. The shelves are barely stocked, the sign has been broken for months, and nobody really gives a shit because they've been watching the boss raid the cash dra
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
1) Thank you.
2) It's not working.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If we stopped wasting so much money on foreign wars and bailing out mismanaged companies, we could easily afford it. 50 or 100 billion dollars should be enough to fund this, and that's nothing compared to how much money we've wasted in Iraq.
Re: (Score:2)
NASA could pull of plenty if it skipped sending humans for fifty or seventy-five years then spent the time perfecting the robots we must have anyway to effectively exploit what we find.
If the mission is really "exploration" then send (lots of) remotely-manned missions.
I agreed for different reasons... (Score:2)
"There is nothing 'out there' that is worth the cost of going. Forget that motivation. Does that mean we shouldn't go? No, but it means we've passed the Point of No Return on Investment!"
Michael Gavon on 'Rocket Science [af2k.com]' ©1990
For example: Mining the asteroids for Unobtanium. To mine the Unobtanium, you need to lift the mining equipment to the asteroid. Bring or get the energy to mine it. Load it and de-orbit it from the Belt to Earth AND THEN STOP IT. You can work some cool tricks (slingshots, balutes, solar sails, whatnot) but the energy remains the same. The amount of energy to get something there and back is IMMENSE. You will NEVER recoup that money spent on energ
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is EXACTLY what NASA should do (Score:2)
Since real manned exploration of Mars is a pipe dream at this point (both technologically and financially), a manned trip to an asteroid is just the ticket if you want to stay in the manned exploration business. The Moon? Been there done that. Mars? Can't do that yet. Asteroids are do-able, and when it comes to manned exploration, fairly cheap. Unless we're going to abandon manned exploration completely, then an asteroid is the next logical "First" for NASA.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why manned? Sending robots on a one-way mission is always going to be an order of magnitude cheaper than sending humans and safely bringing them back home. However, sending humans on a one-way mission may be cheaper still!
I simply don't understand how anyone human can have this attitude. I'm all for doing most exploration via robitic means, but for man never to go to new areas himself? Further, if we don't do it, someone else... China, India, Russia, someone... is going to go. They're certainly not going to ignore the human factor.
Exploration isn't just about science, and never has been. In fact, even with the advent of the scientific revolution, I'd say science has been at best a minor motivation. Simply getting there is pa
Its a good choice (Score:2)
Apollo had enough delta-V for a mission to a near earth asteroid, and could have made the duration with a stretched service module for more life support. The design issue is whether to build a big, slow vehicle, or a small, fast vehicle. The slow option gives you more to build on for the future. The fast option has less risk because a quick return to Earth is built in from the start.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It would work if we were going to commit to a colony somewhere like Titan or Mars, but there would have to be continuous expenditure. An unmanned supply every year and new man power every ten years, perhaps. It would be interesting how many qualified people you would find. You need people who have no interest in having children. who don't want to live on Earth (be able to go for a walk in the bush, etc) and who are not interested in the social aspects of living in a large community.
Once you selected people
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This program is planned to take 50% longer than Apollo building upon what we already know. Frankly, any manned mission scheduled to take longer than Apollo will be canceled before it gets off the ground. Between now and 2025 there will be four presidential elections. That is potentially four wishy-w
Rigth place, wrong goal (Score:3, Interesting)
A Known Quantity. (Score:2, Interesting)
An approach to space exploitation (and thus exploration) has been known for decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space [wikipedia.org]
Gerard K. O'Neill wrote this book decades ago, and I see no reason to deviate from the basic plan described within.
It ain't sexy (Score:2)
NASA needs high profile missions that inspire awe. They need to build excitement and inspire awe. They need to thrive on whiz-bang technology and showcase what the human spirit is capable of achieving. Those are the fundamentals the space program is built on. For the last twenty years they've sucked at it.
I don't want to pass too much judgement on landing on hunks of rock a couple of AU's away, but it sure doesn't seem too sexy to me. I think most people get excited about other things. Throw some rove
First things first (Score:2)
We should master to blow asteroids away from Earths trijectory first.
What happened? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What happened? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nixon wanted to get out of manned spaceflight. Follow-on Apollo's were canceled, the Venus fly-by was canceled (you can see the crew module at the Air and Space Museum, except it's labeled "Skylab"), the Saturn V was thrown away, the Germans and Americans from the 1930's were all retired, from Von Braun on down, the middle-engineering of Apollo was all fired (I remember PhDs pumping gas in Florida), and what was left was the bureaucrats. Bureaucrats can run things, but they won't give you grand leaps.
Re:What happened? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What happened? (Score:4, Interesting)
My opinion is that, as a culture, we've become too risk averse. The requirement to (and expense of) engineering every possible conceivable thing that could go wrong out of, well, everything, is destroying the possibility of achieving anything.
Really? (Score:2)
I think that this is a good idea (Score:2)
Apollo could have reached some of the Near Earth Asteroids. This would have been a good idea in the 1970's, and it would be a good idea now.
Good God, please stop already! (Score:2)
Positive economic return? How much would it cost to go get 1000 tons of, say, bauxite and extract the aluminum? How much would the resulting aluminum cost to produce? Would there be a "positive economic return?" Answer 1) bringing it back to earth, 2) doing it off-planet (you still need to bring back the aluminum, though). Include the cost of buildin
What's the point (Score:4, Insightful)
I know this is going to sound like a troll, but what's the point.
nasa has become nothing but a pet poodle that each new administration scraps the work of the previous one and wastes all the funding that went into it for some new vision.
I used to love space and nasa, but now days i just get annoyed.
I'm starting to agree with putting space in the private sector but not for the reasons the current admin' says.
i want space exploration out of the hands of the politicians.
exit soap box.
Why? (Score:2)
Solar flare protection (Score:2)
One advantage to being on, or in "orbit" around an asteroid or other small body (like the moons of mars), is that it is relatively quick and easy to change and hold one's position relative to that body. So if the astronauts see a solar flare coming they just move into the shadow and hang out there for the few hours it takes for it to pass. No expensive delta-v, no digging in the dirt.
Of course Arthur C. Clarke foresaw this in his story about a visit to the asteroid Icarus.
It's about experience surviving beyond LEO (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the mining idea misses the point. This NASA plan is all about gaining experience surviving outside of low earth orbit.
1: Surviving without the massive radiation shield that earth's magnetosphere provides.
2: Surviving without an option for quick Earth return.
3: Surviving without near instantaneous communication with ground control, Major Tom.
4: Surviving extended exposure to zero-g (muscle and bone loss)
Well #4 has already been worked out a lot at ISS though the amount of exercise needed is significant (less mission time) and not perfect (still need to get strong again when back on earth).
Shall we start debating the need for artificial G via rotation?
Also #2 has been somewhat worked over with ISS, specifically the need for lot's of spare parts, redundant systems, and design for easy repair. What's not so well covered is, wetware repair. MedBay anyone? Is there a doctor in the house?
It could be fine... (Score:5, Interesting)
A very long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (MIT, mid 1970's, when I was an undergraduate and a member of MIT"s Planetary Astronomy Laboratory of that era), I remember having conversations with Mike Gaffey about asteroid mining. I see a reference to Technology Review on asteroid mining from Mike in 1977, so I think this got all published; I don't have any TR's of that era around to refresh my memory.
I remember one interesting scheme, where you might take a m-type metallic asteroid (which is mostly iron, nickel, and other useful metals) to earth orbit, by any of a number of propulsion schemes (solar sail, ion engine, or the like). It would probably take a number of years to move it from the asteroid belt to earth orbit. Then foam the asteroid (use solar mirrors to make it molten, and inject gas), and shape it into a lifting body. Then you would fly it into the earth's atmosphere, and land it in the ocean outside any port you would care to deliver it to. The point of foaming it was to reduce its density so that it would reenter the earth's atmosphere without much heating and ablation (we don't want to dump lots of metal into the earth's upper atmosphere), and float when you landed it.
Then you take a tug boat and pull it to a dock, and you have however many kilotons of metal you like. And without the huge energy cost of mining and environmental problems on earth.
As I remember, all the physics work (without having to invent fundamental new technologies), and there are lots of metallic asteroids. Now we just have to figure out how to actually do it. And it is way, way easier to deal with getting to and from the asteroids than the moon or any planet.
- Jim
Mining asteroids makes no economic sense (Score:4, Interesting)
This type of mission has great potential for positive economic return based on the fact that no effort has to be spent on getting in and out of a distant planet's gravity well.
Someone is forgetting that one has to get in/out of EARTH's gravity well which is the biggest one outside of the gas giants. Then you have to actually mine whatever it is (which we lack the technology to do) in deep space and safely bring it back intact. What are you going to mine in any serious quantity that you can safely return to earth without the item either burning up in the atmosphere or turning the item being returned into a weapon. (Remember that any significant fraction of an asteroid makes a heck of a divot when it hits the earth at high speed.) I can't imaging there are a lot of asteroids composed of precious metals floating around. Maybe there is an asteroid filled with inkjet refills or human blood?
Seriously, even ignoring the technical issues (which are huge) I haven't heard anything relating to mining asteroids that remotely makes economic sense. What could we possibly mine on an asteroid that could be worth the enormous cost of retrieving it from the asteroid belt? We only have a vague idea of what many of these things are composed of and what we do know isn't anything terribly rare here on Earth. The idea of mining asteroids is a romantic and cool idea but we would have to be SERIOUSLY in desperate need of something to make the economics of asteroid mining make any kind of sense.
Scientific research? Hell yeah. Economic return? Not likely in this century.
Wouldn't the moon make WAY more sense. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, the real deal here is manufacturing facilities, not mining per se. There are TONS of asteroids all over the moon, that could be used for early mining to support manufacturing on the moon.
And really the best way to "mine" the asteroid belt as one said in reference to hauling stuff, would be fishing for stones, and then hauling them back to the moon. Thrown down where it would be safe enough, but far enough from the manufacturing facility, and then hauled mined and manufactured back there.
THis would of course be multiphase and requires just tons of energy. Nuclear batteries are not likely to create enough energy, and other forms of nuclear energy require ALOT of water. So we have a basic problem in creating MINING and MANUFACTURING levels of energy. Energy to create steel for instance. Without water or internal combustion engines, it becomes tough to make that amount of energy.
Weird restrictions and ill defined goals (Score:4, Interesting)
What was cancelled to make room for the asteroid mission was the Mars mission. Why? Well, the administration says that the asteroids are closer. I Am Not a Scientist (IANAS), but through careful and methodical research I've determined that the moon is still closer. And it likely has minerals, has some gravity to help with biological issues like muscle atrophy, etc. Oh, and we've already gone there with 1960's technology, so it's a pretty close bet we could do it again.
The current big problem is getting mass to (or out of) orbit. If you want to pretend the government's best role is things like infrastructure, they should fund private companies to develop heavy rockets for lift, space factories for building space-launched rockets, or a space habitat that isn't in low Earth orbit.
My suspicion is the asteroid mission was selected because failure (or future cancellation) will be hardly noticed. However, everyone would certainly notice a habitat on Mars or the moon that we no longer use. The saying goes "If we can send a man to the moon" not "If we can rendezvous with an asteroid!"
Finally, there are no intermediate goals in the strategy. Just "get there." What we don't need is NASA to wander about for years developing "stuff" with no progress. We've already seen that for too many decades.
lasso an asteroid (Score:3, Interesting)
There are a lot of near-Earth asteroid, like Toutitis a few years ago. Send a mission to one, and alter its orbit so that it enters near-Earth orbit, say at geosync. Then we'd have a *real* space station, once we dug into it, and used it for raw materials, one that would have real protection against solar flares, and that could be used to base true deep-space ships (that only go from orbit to orbit) to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This would make interplanetary travel for humans far cheaper.
For that matter, we could use nuclear (steam) rockets from there, which would make trips a lot faster.
mark
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Operative word: "may"
I however, doubt that asteroids contain an "incredible wealth of minerals. Useful mineral deposits on earth are formed from heating and pressure. It's unclear that asteroids are / were subject to these forces. It may just be a bunch of low grade rock.
The 'easily acce
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
We don't know for sure.
We don't know for sure.
We don't know for sure.
This we know for sure: unle
Re: (Score:2)
First we have to ask ourselves, how many people can our planet sustain? 10 billion? 15 billion?
Realize that if the idiots have their way the right answer is 250 million. If you want to lock down the Earth and treat it as a closed system, this is probably a reasonable limit.
The first step is to make sure the idiots do not succeed. Probably part A of that plan is making sure that space exploration isn't pushed aside for "solving Earthbound problems first" because that is the same as "never".
NASA can have all the plans they want, but the current administration seems to be focused on cutting them off a
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you think we've got population problems you clearly haven't been paying attention. East Asia, which has some of the highest population densities in the world also has among the lowest birth rates. The rate for China is lower than the US. Nations like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have among the lowest rates in the world. Most of Europe also has extremely low birth rates. If it weren't for immigration America's rate would probably be a lot lower than it is. I don't know if Europe still does it, but Japan